{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/704",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 704,
    "subject": "5HC--le notebook",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-02T04:07:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-02T04:07:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0012-0044@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-02T04:07:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC--le notebook",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm supposed to make some stab at the notebook mystery outlined in\nCAVE CANEM: that is, regarding the missing first three pages of\nMarsch's notebook, cut with a very sharp knife.\n\nThe material at the front must be a journal of the first few days of\nMarsch on Sainte Anne: from splashdown in the ocean to Roncevaux,\nsince the journal after the cut talks about Marsch being already in\nthe next town, Frenchman's Landing.\n\nWho cut them, with what, and why?\n\nI don't know!\n\nBut I'll start with V.R.T. himself.\n\nWhat would V.R.T. want to cut out from the front?  Maybe something\nwhich he had memorized as a false memory, something that he didn't\nwant others to have as a script--maybe an Earthman's impressions of\nthe town of Roncevaux, the train ride to Frenchman's Landing, etc.\nThat is, the words V.R.T. rattles off when they question him later.\n\nThis seems somewhat weak.  Maybe there was an interview which\nrevealed too much about V.R.T.--could Marsch have accidentally\ninterviewed Mrs. T?  That seems a stretch.\n\nThen again, things were lost in the outback.  A lot of tape\nrecordings, only some of which had been transcribed (presumably by\nMarsch himself before his death).\n\nAs for the cutting tool, I nominate the razor in the shaving kit\nlisted in the supplies.\n\nNext, what if Marsch cut it?\n\nThat would mean that there was something there he didn't want V.R.T.\nto see. Unless we think that he thought he was going to die and\ndidn't want some secret, like \"I am a spy\" written across the first\nthree pages, to be discovered after his death. <g>\n\nNo, I don't think Marsch cut it.  Even if he was a spy, especially if\nhe was a spy, he wouldn't have written anything revealing in those\npages.  Unless he was an unwitting agent and had been approached by\nsomeone in Roncevaux and had agreed to take a package to x or\nwhatever.  But even then he wouldn't have cut it out--Robert Borski\nis right, it is probably the agent in Laon.\n\nNote: the name Roncevaux is associated with the death of a major hero\n(Roland), just as \"Nessus\" is associated with the death of a major\nhero (Herakles).\n\nSo, as Robert Borski asks, what happened at Roncevaux?  Even though\nthe original has been destroyed, we have a copy in the form of V.R.T.\nhimself--at the very least he read and internalized the material\nbefore it was cut.  It seems likely that he has alluded to events in\nRoncevaux, either during the interviews, or in his own writings, or\nin \"A Story.\"\n\nWho is the agent at Laon?  We know Marsch/V.R.T. sold his equipment,\nbought some clothes, got his beard trimmed, and radiogrammed a message\nto R. Trenchard in Frenchman's Landing (about the \"death\" of his son\nV.R.T. in the back of beyond) at Laon.  That sounds like four possible\nagents right there.  In order to recognize the bearded V.R.T., the agent\nmust have seen Marsch before.  Could it be that another Culot, son of\nthe Culot interviewed by Marsch in Frenchman's Landing, runs a similar\nclothing store at Laon (which is a coastal city to the south of\nFrenchman's Landing)?\n\nWell, whoever cut the beard (if anyone really did--Marsch/V.R.T.\nmakes this claim and we have reason to believe he just wills the\nbeard to whatever length) would have sharp razors to cut things out.\nBut if the =agent= cut stuff out then said agent would appear to be a\ndouble agent!\n\nSo, according to this thought, whoever cut the pages didn't want them\nto fall into the hands of the Laon agent and thence into the hands of\nSainte Croix.\n\nAdam was asking about \"A Story.\"  We read it first as the\nanthropological fiction \"reconstruction of a lost world\" it purports\nto be, then we learn that it is the fantasy of a criminal in solitary\nconfinement and questionable sanity.  And dubious anthropology.  But\nknowing that, if we go back into \"A Story\" and ignore the anthro and\nread it as the dreamy confessional autobiography of a murderer, we\nmay find some more pieces to the espionage thriller of \"V.R.T.\"\n\nI don't know.\n\nTime for a detailed timeline of Marsch and Marsch/V.R.T.\n\n=mantis=\n\nP.S. 2-15-2, \"Fifth of September,\" the supressed political faction on\nSainte Croix.  This sounds to me like Russian revolution stuff, or\nearly Japanese coup attempt stuff--both used the dates as their\nnames, I think (the Japanese I'm sure of).  In Proust terms, the\nrelevant item is \"the Dreyfus Affair\" which was a heady combination\nof spying charges (info to the Germans, I believe) and anti-Semitism\nthat shook France pretty hard.  Dreyfus himself was out at Devil's\nIsland.\n\nFor \"anti-Semitism\" we could easily substitute \"anti-abo\"?  Or\n\"anti-faux-French\"?\n\n=601="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}